Snowblind
by Luddite Robot
Summary: Xander and Kennedy travel to Minnesota to help a new slayer fight a vampire gang. Sequel or Series with "Snowblind"
1. Chapter 1

Snowblind Chapter 1 

* * *

Miserable night for a flat tire. A week after the first big snow and it was still post-snow cold. Bitter cold.

Mike wanted to talk. Talk! That's what he called it. Might as well add "Bring a box of Trojans and a case of Coors" for all the talking that was planned. Bastard. Two hours down 71 for a knock-down, drag-out screamfest, and then two more hours back up to Willmar. Well, an hour plus switching to the donut. And there's the early shift tomorrow. That's gonna drag.

Must be five below before wind chill, speaking of drags. Add to that pulling out the bag of salt and the tool box to get to the jack, donut and lug wrench.

So dark. So cold. Plus the wind chill. Almost no moon tonight, just a sliver. That doesn't help.

She started loosening the bolts, getting 'em started while the weight of the car held everything still. Is there enough left in this rusted-out bucket to take a jack?

The lug nuts loose, she started cranking the jack. The jack on her dad's old T-Bird was big and tall and didn't require you to kneel and break your back to make it work. It also didn't take forever to lift and drop the vehicle.

Damn it. A car coming. Could be some good Samaritan - like a woman can't change a flat - but it could be anyone. Just pass on.

Damn it. At least turn off the brights. What does he think he's doing?

* * *

"This is so _X-Files_, it isn't funny."

Those were the first non-navigational words Xander spoke since they left the airport.

"Really? You think? I'm getting more of a _Fargo_ vibe off this." Kennedy was sick of his silence and was ready to jump on any conversational bandwagon he chose.

"The traveling out to the middle of nowhere, which looks like somewhere within an hour drive of Vancouver, to start questioning people."

"One, We're nowhere near Vancouver. Two, we're not wearing the suits. Three, we're both believers. Four, not people -- a new slayer. Five, winter -- no bees. And six, we don't have the chemistry. No offense."

"And here I thought we made such a cute couple," Xander deadpanned.

"Well, I'm cute, of course. You ... might have potential, given a wardrobe change and a breath mint."

Xander ignored the taunt. "_Fargo_ had snow everywhere. All the outdoor shots were white. Here we have grass poking out, mostly patches of snow, and you can see dirt in the fields. How do you live with this cold?"

"Never saw snow before, huh?"

"Once. It was a thing." Xander kept looking out the window. It was easy to forget it with the way his glass eye moved, but when he sat in the front passenger seat, if he wasn't turned around sideways, it was like he had his back turned to you. A British car would've been better. She would've driven and he would've been forced to sit toward the left, where he'd have to see her. Three hours of this was just too much. The Blazer was much more practical for the job, but still.

It was either her or Faith, and they decided that it was safer if the Slayer who wasn't a prison escapee was the one to go. That always threw a monkey wrench into planning. It was down to them because the other criteria was that the Slayer had to not have school. Willow couldn't take the time off because of classes, and, well, Andrew is Andrew. Xander had griped, but he packed and went.

They brought some gear - bows and wooden arrows, as bow hunters wouldn't attract too much attention - but had to stop at a hardware store to pick up some inch-thick dowel rods. There was some after-dinner carving in the works. They had also hit a sporting goods store to pick up some tools books, pads and some other things. Calling-warming gifts, or something.

Kennedy squirmed with frustration. Training and sparring she could do, but her big experience was the big war. Hunting down the bad guys was a lot easier when they were hunting you down first. And when you have to work off 'it was a thing....'?

"We there yet?"

* * *

"Hon! Your friends are here."

"Mom, they're not friends. I talked to them on the phone once. I don't know them."

"Yes, dear. But still, they're your guests. Go invite them in. The apple crisp is cooling and we'll have supper at eight. Your father's out in the machine shed. He'll want to meet them, too."

"I'll get 'em."

They parked under the house tree, just off the gravel. Well, if you could see the gravel, which they obviously did not. It hadn't gotten warm enough for the big snow from October to melt too much yet. Pretty much where you drove through the snow or walked through it.

She grabbed her coat and stepped out into the garage, where she laced up her boots, and then outside.

Pokey was barking at them, mostly for attention. The guy knelt down and petted her and her tail doubled in speed. Dark hair, dark sunglasses, black jeans and a black coat. That must be Xander. He has a really nice smile.

The girl must be Kennedy. Red sweater and jeans. A green long coat and knit cap. Long curly brown hair. She's one of the Slayers. Gotta be. "Hey, we're here."

"Welcome to Minnesota." Was that as stupid as it sounds?

The guy stood. "Thanks. The signs at the airport said it already. So did the guy at the lumber yard, and I think the guy at the sporting goods store. But it can't be said too often, I think. So, really? Ten thousand lakes? They sent someone out to count that?"

"Yeah." She stepped forward and put her hand out. "You're Beth, right?"

"Right. I'm just so glad you guys could make it out. How was the flight?"

"The flight was a flight. We took off. We landed. We're here. Can we get to this?"

"Way to show patience, Kennedy." The guy laughed. "I've been cooped up in one mode of transportation or another since this morning, and I would love to do something physical before the mental. In a constructive, alone, entirely up-and-up sort of way. You said something about a turkey barn?"

"Oh, yeah. I pulled the straw bales over this morning. It's that big metal building down there, by the road."

"Great. That's great. Why don't I set up, and you guys can ... what? Get your slay on?"

"I think a little bit of training sounds good." The girl pulled out her keys and opened the back of the white Blazer and pulled out a couple of bags, passing one to Beth.

The guy grabbed his gear. "I'm off for the turkey shoot. Wait. That's the easy one. I can do better."

"It's been a long day, Xander. I'll write it up as brilliant and hilarious. Go."

"Gone." Beth started toward the barn with her load, with Kennedy following. Xander took the other path, slipping halfway on a patch of ice.

"I hate snow!"

Beth failed to stifle a giggle.

* * *

Kennedy carried the duffel with the pads and the rest. Beth led, carrying long bag and opening the doors to the barn/training area. As Kennedy starts unpacking, Beth looked in her bag, finding six pieces of dark-varnished wood.

"So, what are these then?"

"They're bokken. Wooden training swords. I got some shinai in there, too."

"You beat up vampires with wooden swords?"

"No." Kennedy laughed. "You practice with the wooden swords. You chop up demons with real swords. Although, there are several species of oni that are effectively battered with bamboo."

"OK. How do you hold it?"

"Well, give it a shot. You're a Slayer. Chances are, you'll hit pretty close and we'll tweak it from there."

Beth grabbed the bokken and stepped into a stance.

"OK. That's good. Pretty close to the triangular stance. Very good. Now, with Japanese swordsmanship, you're playing with angular momentum. You don't so much swing it. Small movements at the handle get big speed and control with the end. So you spread your hands. Back hand at the pommel, front hand a bit out. That's pretty much the grip." She stepped into a similar, if perfected, stance and breathed out. "Now, swing at my head. Hard as you can."

"Hard as _I_ can? You sure of that?"

"Trust me, I'm sure. I train every day with people just as strong, or worse."

"Worse?"

"Yeah. There are stories. But first, go ahead."

Beth swung the stick above her head and brought it straight down, meeting surprisingly with Kennedy's lightning-fast block. The crack of wood meeting wood echoed through the large open building.

"Wow, that's fast."

"Not used to fighting fast guys?"

"I've gone through some stuff with my dad, but until now, I've not really found anything. And I'm fifteen. I have my permit, not my license. I can't really chase 'em around."

"I wish I could help you there. Started doing fieldwork a year ago or so. What I _can_ help you with is this sword. The thing is, you're using your arms."

"What, I hold this thing with my feet?"

"No. What you do is do most of it with your hands. The katana is a three-foot-long razor blade. You tap and slice. You don't use raw power. A broadsword is raw power. They're fun. We'll hit them later. Now get into position. I'll just tap your sword. Just relax, hold on tight, and don't move. I won't hit you."

"Oh-kay."

They settled into stances, they met eyes, and Beth was shocked by the pain in her hands and in her ears. She didn't remember seeing Kennedy move.

"Wow."

"That's the thing with Japanese swordsmanship. You see all these movies, see all the jumping and the swinging. That's cool. Some of it works. But for real? You'd see two swordsman face off, watching for weakness, and you wouldn't notice the killing blow until it's past. It's all about control."

"You really like this."

"Yeah. I run through my katas, try to keep it up, but there's really nobody I can do it with."

"Nobody into swords down in Ohio?"

"No. Well, there's one. She loves 'em. Xander showed her the Seven Samurai and she went off. We spar once and a while, but she's really into the wildness. It isn't fun."

"Can't you force her? Teach her? Aren't you the oldest? I mean, besides Buffy?"

"Buffy and Faith. She's the one I'm talking about. Faith. She doesn't listen to me. It's a thing. I don't know what it is."

"Well, this is cool. How do you get that speed?"

"Like I told you, angular momentum." Kennedy stepped beside the younger slayer and started to demonstrate.

* * *

Evidently this building used to hold turkeys. Now it holds an 18-wheeler that has seen better days and a.... Xander had no idea what that thing was. What Superman saved the kid from in Superman III. The building was long, it was open, it was pretty much access-controlled, and it kept the snow and wind off when you practiced. It wasn't heated, which he felt was a big lose, but nothing's perfect.

He put up the targets away from the truck, a big enough block to make a sudden downrange howdy all-too-possible. Targets at twenty yards, forty yards, and for him, the grail distance, sixty yards. Work could be done to make this a nicer, safer indoor range, but it would be sufficient for one or two archers, which were all he suspected would ever use this. He picked up his compound bow.

He had tweaked hers, since she was busy with the new kid and thus too involved to unpack it and set it up. She always complained that the draw was too light, but much heavier and he could not draw it, and the arrow is not a kinetic kill weapon. You don't knock your baddie down with an arrow. All more draw weight would do is flatten trajectory some.

He drew 65 lbs. Decent for hunting, he had heard, but not the 150 of the old-time British longbowman. Or at least that's what that guy on Conquest said. He loaded the bolt-on quivers with aluminum shafts and wad-cutter tips. Best to keep the wooden shafts stowed until necessary. Sometimes they break up on launch. It's the cams that do it, not the raw power. Like that guy said, they used to shoot 150-pound bows all the time, and on 65-pound recurves, like the ones they sell where he bought the arrows, there's no problem. He had replaceable tips for them: wad-cutters, for putting holes in paper and sticking into hay; broadheads and spikeheads for putting holes in vampires and other bads. He'd been considering looking into arrow-making, but he just didn't have time to test them. Instead, they'd use the recurve stash.

The targets are too big. The heart's about as big as your fist, and the center ring was much wider. With what they hunt, anything other than a kill shot will just piss 'em off, but that's something to mention later. He picked up his bow. Now that the range was set, he should try it out.

A timer. First addition. Something foot-triggerable would be nice. He breathed evenly, hanging the bow to the left, his left foot range-forward. Eight arrows on the bow. And the time would start ... now.

He brought the bow up and grabbed the first arrow, the closest arrow, by the notch. He brought it to notch-point, drew back, hesitated for the slightest moment, and loosed it at the closest target.

_Thwok!_

He didn't look down as he grabbed the next arrow, noting the placement. In the red, but in a real-sized inner-circle, that'd be questionable. He'd count it as a miss, he decided, as he drew again. Speed is of the essence --

_Thwok!_

-- he could take forever to aim, but in that time, the vamp would be on him and the bow would become a club, at best. That one was better. Solid hit. Third arrow comes off the quiver as he thinks a moving target would be better. Maybe a charging one. Maybe that's it --

_Thwok!_

-- or maybe he'd just seen the first part of _Silence Of The Lambs_ once too many times and loved the Hogan's Alley scene too much. Solid in the red. Good. He remembers to breathe easily as he draws again. This is so much better than --

_Thwok!_

-- a crossbow, because you have better reload speeds. It takes more training, though. Years of Nintendo made him and most of his friends pretty good at point-and-shoot with the crossbow but by this time --

_Thwok!_

-- he'd still be reloading for the second shot instead of having four solid shots in a good grouping and one questionable one. The other good thing is that the bow has been out of the use of military services, except for guerrilla ones --

_Thwok!_

-- for quite some time. He can't remember if his facility with Anya's handgun came from being taught to shoot by Uncle Rory or by his one-night rotation in Uncle Ethan's Misguided Children, floating in and out of his head. Nobody --

_Thwok!_

-- can say that this is not his. Nobody can say the next shot, headed for the sixty-yard target instead of the twenty, is a success or failure by anything other than his skill, his practice. He liked things like that. He let go, holding the bow out as he watched the shot go out, out, out --

_Th._

-- and hit high and left in the third ring, falling immediately out of the target.

You can't trust a sixty-yard shot anyway. Too much air time. You never know what'll be there when the arrow hits.

* * *

They were sitting in the part of the barn Beth had set up for training. Xander sat with his back to the wall, on an overturned bucket and under the makeshift rack for Kennedy's wooden swords. Kennedy sat to his right, cross-legged on the floor. Beth sat on a battered folding chair next to the space heater that brought the room above freezing, barely.

"I don't know what Buffy said to you in the summer when she came, so, before we start in the research stage of this, I'll cover some basics." Xander fiddled with his window-panes. He still wasn't used to wearing glasses except when using power tools. "Vampires and most other things in horror movies are real. You, Beth, have been chosen to slay them. Thus the word Slayer. We've developed a few pamphlets. This first one answers some questions about vampires. This next on contains a few useful spells." Xander passed the stack of paper to Beth. "The first and possibly most useful spell is on the top. Vampires cannot enter a home uninvited. This spell rescinds an invitation. It's a useful thing."

Beth leaned forward. "How?"

"Excuse me?"

"I don't get it. You guys have invited vampires into your homes? And you survived long enough to come up with a spell?"

"Well...."

"Aren't all vampires bad? Isn't that why there are Slayers?"

Xander glanced at Kennedy. She looked away. He knew this joke. Lone Ranger and Tonto ride into a box canyon. They look up and see men with bows and arrows on both sides of the canyon. Lone Ranger says 'We seem to be surrounded by hostile Indians.'

Tonto says, 'What's this We, white man?'

So be it.

"When we're done here, covered in vamp dust and sharing a beer - of the root variety, of course - in celebration of our big win, I'll be glad to start into old war stories. 'There I was, right outside my homeroom class with two of the most notorious vampires in history about to take a bite out of my neck' and all that. But right now, I have two concerns. First is that Beth learn how to be a Slayer. Second is we find the things you called us about and we dust 'em. We should keep discussion on those two topics. And doughnuts." He smiled. "Can't do research without doughnuts."

Beth spoke up. "We don't have any."

"Well then, I guess we'll just start." Kennedy pulled out a notebook and flipped to an open page. "Beth, we heard some on the phone, but could you go through it again?"

Beth stood up. "OK. Let's see. I saw the Marshall paper a few weeks ago and saw this picture. A guy going to Southwest State was found in an alley downtown. Big bite taken out of his neck. Kenny Tolerud. Sheriff said wolf attack. DNR said there's no wolves in the area. Anyway, that night, I saw him in a dream." She waved her hands to ward of anxiety. "God, that's so weird."

"Slayers get dreams sometimes," Kennedy said. "It's part of the deal."

"That in the pamphlet too?" Beth looked away, upset by her biting sarcasm. "Sorry. I'm just ... I don't know. Anyway, I did some looking in other papers. I found a few in other papers. Two over in South Dakota. One in Iowa. Nine, at least, in Minnesota. One in Springfield. One in Blue Earth. A brother and sister in Wanda. Plus some missing persons."

"I don't know the area. Have you mapped it out?"

"No. I didn't think to."

"That's fine. Do you have clippings? From the newspaper?"

"Yeah."

"So, you think there's a vampire at work here?"

"More than one. Kenny's body disappeared."

"So our buddy is making a family. Great." Giles didn't show his frustration so easily. Acting angry under stress doesn't become a Watcher. He took a deep breath. "Kennedy and I will work on that tomorrow while you're in school. There are a few things here we can try to locate these vamps."

"Tell us if you have any more dreams." Kennedy finally joined the conversation. "Those are supposed to provide good clues."

"You haven't had any of these dreams yet?" Beth was shocked.

"I can't explain it. It just hasn't happened yet." Kennedy looked sheepish for the first time he had known her.

Xander stood up. "I never heard Kendra or Faith mention the visions, and what Buffy has said makes them sound like David Cronenberg directing an Ed Wood script ...."

"I think there's something off with the Cleveland Hellmouth, putting out interference or something. None of us have had visions since we moved there. I think time away will bring it out."

"Will you tell me what you see? I'm really curious how they go with other slayers."

"Yeah. Sure. I'm kind of curious myself."

"Well, it was really creepy. I drew out some things that I remember. The sketchbook's in my room. Wanna see?"

"Yeah. Sounds great."

"C'mon."

Exit two slayers, pursued by a bear.

That was a practically useless research session. There's a vampire, we think. He's building a gang, maybe. People are in danger, I guess. Hey, come to my room, I'll show you my etchings.

* * *

"So, this is Kenny." She shows the clipping, taken from her folder of clippings, showing the senior yearbook picture from high school, smiling with short jock hair and a pearl button shirt, and the newspaper article about his death.

"And this is him from my dream." She opens her sketchbook. Most of the face was the same, with facial ridges, demonic eyes and fanged teeth. It was the rest that caught her eye. Beth has a good eye for detail. Baggy pants. White T-shirt. Tattoos down his arm. Black backward baseball cap. Will the real Vamp Shady please stand up?

Behind him is a farmhouse. Looks straight out of Children of the Corn or something. She flipped through the pages quickly. Favored subjects are horses, dogs and rabbits. This is not a girl who drew spooky vampires for fun. She closed the sketchbook and placed it on top of the clippings folder.

"So, this guy looks creepy."

Beth sat cross-legged on the bed with a stuffed bear in her lap. "Yeah. Are they all like that?"

"Don't really know. I haven't met them all." She sat on the bed. "The one I met was ... intense. That's the word. Intense."

"What's the deal with that? Is it like, I dunno, compulsory? To make friends with these guys?"

"I hope not." She laughed for a second. "It wasn't my choice, but he turned out all right. Saved us all."

"The heck!"

She took another look around the room. White modern furniture. Posters of rock stars on the wall. Powerpuff Girls on a twin bed. (More details. Perhaps a Tigger or Piglet.) Beth sat cross-legged on the bed, wearing black sweatpants and a pink sleeveless top. Her brown hair was pulled back in a braid. Just a girl. Like the others. Like Chloe.

"Is that a piercing?" This comment drew Kennedy back to Earth. "In your tongue?"

"Umm, yeah."

"My friend, Connie, got her belly button pierced last summer, right before the Evanescence concert at the Target Center. She said it didn't hurt but I know it did."

"Mine hurt for a while. After a while, I had to think about it to notice."

"Do the boys like it?"

Kennedy stopped to think about it, about what she should disclose. "My sweetheart likes it."

"We went right after the Slayer came to visit. She took me to a cemetery in New Ulm, but it was dead." She snorted at her joke. "So I was thinking that this was all a big gag, like Ashton Kutcher was following me with a video camera or something. I still carried the stake she gave me, but I felt like a fool for it." She grabbed her stuffed Tigger and hugged him to her lap.

"But, like I said, I went to see this show, and when we left I felt -- I don't know how to describe it, but I just knew."

"I understand. I've felt it, too."

"Well, I see this guy. Looked like a biker or something. And he's walking with this girl, and they're ducking into the alley. We're walking back to Sherry's brother's car, and I tell 'em to wait at the car and run off after the guy. The girl's screaming and I kick the guy in the head. Jumping kick, just like Jackie Chan. It was so neat. Anyway, he tries to hit me and I'm blocking and hitting back, and he runs. I'm chasing him through traffic and all and we get to this park with all these hedges and such, and stupid me, only now I remember I have a stake. I catch up with him in ... well, it's like a room but out in the open, and it's all these benches. He grabs me and throws me into one, and he's on me, about to bite, when I get my stake in."

She stood and walked to her desk. "Turns out it's all part of an art museum, and all the benches have words on them." She opened a drawer and pulled out a composition book, turning the pages to a point in the middle. "This is what it said."

Kennedy took the notebook and read.

AFTER DARK IT IS A RELIEF TO SEE A  
GIRL WALKING TOWARD OR BEHIND YOU.  
THEN YOU ARE MUCH LESS LIKELY  
TO BE ASSAULTED. 

Beth sat back down. "I couldn't decide whether that was cool or funny or meaningful or stupid, but I wrote it down. But that's when I knew it was real." She took her clipping folder and gave it Kennedy. "But it's still pretty freaky, right?"

Kennedy thought about it for a moment. "You don't know the half of it."

* * *

Damn that Steph. He had called in the morning at the hospital and at her house. At her sister's place in Blue Earth. He had even called her mom.

Where is she?

All he wanted to do was hang out, get drunk and watch some movies on DVD. Sure, he said they'd talk, but they always got messed up talking. That's not what they were good at.

He kept switching between WCCO and KELO, fearing that some word would come in. It had to be twenty-four hours for the cops to care, but he knew something was wrong. Steph would've called up and started the 'Mike, you moron' rant. The two hour drive didn't calm her down, it stoked her up. There was no angry phone call. Something was wrong.

He was on his third MGD when the news switched to Letterman.

He'd call again. And if there was no answer, he'd drive out. Something was wrong. Something was wrong and he was the last person to see her.

Something was wrong and his last words to her were "Fuck you, bitch."

If they found her dead in a ditch, he was as good as convicted.

He almost didn't hear the knock. Between despair, dread and the Top Ten list, he wasn't focusing on reality. He was on autopilot.

It was Steph. Wearing her biker jacket and her black jeans, the ones she hasn't worn since Christmas before last. Out in this weather with just a jacket. She must be freezing. The collision of worry and relief left him speechless.

She dropped her cigarette and squashed it with her high heeled boot. "So, Mikey. You gonna invite me in?"


	2. Chapter 2

Snowblind Chapter 2 

* * *

Damn stupid kids.

She rolled the squad card into the park, past the gate and toward the picnic area.

Kids come out here and drink. Sometimes they get too drunk to realize they're freezing. Sometimes they pass out and never wake up.

Damn stupid drunken kids.

She saw someone in a picnic shelter. A kid in an unzipped parka, laying down on top of a picnic table. Half the cans of a case of beer were crushed and on the ground, next to a trash can. She couldn't see any sign of breathing from the car, so she grabbed her big Mag-Lite and left the vehicle.

He looked dead. She felt no body heat through the rubber gloves. No pulse, either. Hypothermia aggravate by alcohol poisoning. Gotta be.

She started patting him down for ID. 'Young man with baseball cap and baggy pants' is hardly a unique identifier these days. There was no ID. She was turning back to her squad car when he stood up.

* * *

The pool was just too short to get any real laps done. It was built for families to splash around in as they travel between Wall Drug and the World's Biggest Ball of Twine, not for athletes wanting to work on endurance. Just as a lap is started, it's time to turn around.

Still, the exertion made Kennedy's muscles feel good. Willow said she holds her tension in her shoulders, and since the one person whose fingers and elbows she would prefer to work out her kinks with is far away, this would have to do.

She sounded worried over the phone last night. Like ... she couldn't place it. Xander asked for a few things to be emailed to them, if they could find them. The crime scene and autopsy photos from Kenny Tolerud. The time and location of his last 5 ATM transactions. A _find demon_ map covering southwestern Minnesota. "You understand that will entail illegal access into several protected computing systems, don't you?" Willow proceeded to promise all three by noon that day.

She switched from crawl to backstroke this lap.

Faith had taken the line, asking how well we were playing together, how this corn-fed slayer was doing.

Then she asked about Xander. How he had handled the flight and the first meeting. Everything was fine, she insisted. There was that whole Dante "I'm not even supposed to be here today" thing at the airport, but since then he had thrown himself into his role, pretty much.

"Two things. First, don't underestimate the guy. He's done this thing before. He's played the game and he knows how it works. Better than you. Better than me, even. Use that."

The second thing is what freaked her. "Watch his back, though," Faith had said, "because I'm not sure he's playing to win."

She climbed out of the pool and walked to the table where her towel, flip-flops and key card were set. She felt a chill while the water dripped down her body.

She had spent the morning -- the swim time, the running time, and the kata time in her room -- running that through her head.

* * *

Xander sat in the booth at Shays, intensely avoiding all thoughts about the folder and map on the table in front of him. He had spent half the night going through Beth's clippings, finding the towns listed. Once that pass proved useless, he then went through again, setting a chronology on Best Western paper and marking numbers on the map. When this didn't lead to a strong pattern either, he assigned a value to each, with odd-but-sad unlikely events getting a 5 and clear cases of drug gangs on PCP getting a 1.

Three passes on the victims' faces. Three passes on the scene descriptions.

He couldn't sleep for an hour after he stopped.

He knew the day would be near-straight research, adding dots and dates to the map. Thinking about the victims. This he wouldn't do until after breakfast.

He had decided on the ham and cheese omelette. He also decided to coffee and orange juice until Kennedy showed up. He was famished, but he wasn't rude. Much.

He had dug through the Star-Tribune, looking for Dilbert and gossip on J-Lo, when he found a story that made the map. Now he was drinking his coffee and watching the traffic out the window.

Mother, father and three daughters in Blue Earth, found dismembered in their home, with Mother's sister already a missing person. Where had he heard stories about slaughtered families before? Right. The Watchers' Journals on Angelus. "Round up the usual drug gangs," he said under his breath, as he folded up the paper and sipped his orange juice. He really didn't like this one. Or ones; He wasn't sure. He couldn't tell without autopsy photos, and sometimes not even then.

He now had ten more additions to his photos-wanted list, not that he really wanted to see them.

He saw Kennedy coming. Her hair was still wet, and he could tell by the shape of the bulge she had a stake in the left leg pocket of her cargo pants. Of course, vampires usually don't show up in diners until after 2am, when the bar crowd comes in, but it never hurts to be careful.

He waved his hand when she came in, and she pulled off her coat when she sat. "Morning." He slides the map over. "Looks like we got called just in time."

"What? More?"

"Whole family got it. I think I know who got 'em." A glance at her face says there's more. "What you have?"

"TV news out of Minneapolis says a police officer was found in a park in Redwood Falls. Didn't say anything about how she was found, but the other cops looked pissed."

Xander took out his notebook and began writing. Number eleven, marked with a bullet and an exclamation mark. Important, but be careful.

The waitress walked over. "You to ready to order?" Xander quickly turned to a blank page.

Kennedy took a quick pass through the menu. "A short stack with wheat toast, and orange juice."

She looked at Xander. His stomach was reacting to the new news.

"Toast. Just toast."

* * *

_She sees death coming at her with great speed._

She has the vampire down, fear in his yellow eyes, and she starts her kill swing, tmen her left side erupts in pain. She tries to draw a breath but it won't come. She sinks to her knees and feels the teeth tear into her neck....

She opened her eyes. She saw a desktop and a puddle of drool. She shot up in her seat, then kicked herself mentally. Nice way to call attention to yourself.

She reached down to her backpack. Her notebook has to be there. She tried to grab it without looking, trying to look attentive while doing it.

She didn't sleep much the night before, She had been nervous and expectant and slightly sick to her stomach. But mostly excited.

She wasn't as excited now as she was last night.

* * *

Xander was done with the library. Meaning he never wanted to go back there.

He didn't know what was worse; that most of these town weeklies had something in the last two years that his Sunnydale-calibrated danger sense would call 'hinky' or even 'odd', or that the regular fare of these papers, such as high school sports reports, interviews with the winner of the Canned Meat Day pageant and the announcement that one of someone's grandchildren stopped it for an hour on the way between someplace and someplace else, put such a human face on the odd things that it pushed the odd things deeper into the "bad stuff" category in his mind.

He was hunched over the laptop. He couldn't make it dance like Willow could, not-literally, but he could dial into the internet and get his email. And he was downloading a map.

He had his maps. First thing he did after his not-lunch was to get a new map and just mark the 1's. Just the ugly situations that seemed likely connected. He could read a map, and while these guys were clearly using this as a feeding ground, it wasn't like they all the old dates were in Iowa and all the new ones were in northern Minnesota. They were roaming, but they were staying here. How wide a here is here? They only went through what was at the library, so he had no idea. He wanted to believe that yes, he could document their activities with the dailies and weeklies available at the Lyon County Public Library.

Willow had sent what she got from her sources, plus the high-detail scan of Willow's _find demon_ map. He knew what to do with it, and would've even if he didn't have Willow's instructions: _ Drag the pics.zip icon to the desktop . Then double-click it. Click "Extract". It should already have the path already set in the "Extract to:" field. If not, it's the root icon in that little window. Click "Extract". Double-clicking an image will open it in an Internet Explorer browser window. And Giles should've bought Macs. _

What he saw made him glad he hadn't had lunch. The Blue Earth photos were ... words failed him. The youngest girl was six years old. Whoever -- whatever -- did this didn't drink from her, and he found himself in debate whether or not that was a good thing. The oldest was twelve, and she held an aluminum softball bat. She bled, but not without getting a hit or two in. Twelve was how old Dawn was when Angelus came. He remembered how she cried when Buffy didn't come home. Except she didn't. He knew that, and he knew she would've.

Whoever did this was an amateur, though. The screengrab on the investigation management software put the adults dead first. Angel would've made sure the parents saw their children's death. Angelus. Angelus would've. He closed the window.

He opened the first picture for the Redwood Falls investigation, then closed it again. Again, a vampire. Clearly. He knew exactly why the police were angry. He deleted the .ZIP file and those pictures. He then opened Willow's scan.

A map can be useless without additional information. You can't really align a map for hiking without North being clearly marked. A road map has different colors and weights for different types of roads. Diagrams in anatomy books come with different layers on clear plastic, so that you can take away the skin and see the muscles, and then the other different systems. The Haynes book for Buffy's old Jeep Cherokee used to really annoy him, because it showed where the upstream oxygen sensor was, but only after you had stripped half the car away. He had found it, but he couldn't reach it. His arm didn't fit. Dawn's skinny little arm didn't fit. Eventually he admitted defeat and took it to Tito's brother friend, Chuy. Chuy knew that engine enough to find his way. It was Xander who paid, and it was Xander who got Buffy's thank-you hug for fixing the "Check Engine" light.

Anyway, a map can be useless without additional information. When the image opened up, small white dots covered the landscape. He compared the map with the first map, and he began to make connections. This demon might have something to do with these 4s. These demons here the likely cause for these 3s. Someone really needs to give Minneapolis a visit one of these days.

And the key fell into place.

He stood up as he dialed the phone, and paced as it rang. He'd contact Kennedy when he had enough to plan from.

"Watched Cauldron Books. How may I direct your call?"

"Andrew, it's Xander. I'm going to need more detail. Now."

* * *

"OK, Xander, what's the deal?"

Xander was just getting settled in the back, since Beth had her math homework spread out on her lap. "I found the key. It was in the blanks."

"Go over that in more detail." Kennedy was anxious, switching her gaze from the road ahead and the man in the rear view mirror.

"It came to me. I compared our map, with the circles and arrows the paragraph on the back, with the one Willow sent. At first I looked for connections, and there were demon clusters where there there were unexplained things." Xander looked excited.

"So, demons and odd things in the paper. Is there a point?"

"Yes, there's a point. Two points at the end of fangs. I started looking for demons where we didn't put numbers."

"Thinking what?"

"Vampires hunt where people are. They nest in cemeteries, abandoned buildings, sewers, caves -- where people aren't. I'm thinking our friend is driving out to where the food is and keeping his home safe."

"That isn't how they did it in Sunnydale."

"Sunnydale had a Hellmouth."

"So, tell me where."

"Worthington. In a closed soup plant. Mapquest says it's about an hour." He passed forward a map.

"We'll need gas. You want anything?"

"Doughnuts."

* * *

They parked a few blocks away, where the business district met residential, just a few blocks away from the closed plant. Xander kept his bow unstrung and in the carry bag. The other two had stakes in their hands and their back pockets. They were trying to look like just a group of teenagers out for a walk at night.

The building is one story in most places, painted red around the top and white to the bottom, like a soup can.

Beth borrowed Kennedy's cell phone and was trying to explain where she was and when she was coming home as Xander strung his bow. Kennedy took a seat on the loading dock, six feet -- out of flying drawstring range -- and sat down.

"Think it's still there?"

"Yeah. I do."

"'Cause the sun has set. No reason not to go out to eat."

"Well, if the vamp's gone, there's still a nest. We can turn this into a fun educational outing."

"Field trip from hell."

Xander stopped and looked up. "Been to that one already. I hate the zoo."

"Anyone ever tell you you're weird?"

"Says the Slayer with a witch for a girlfriend." He laughs to himself as he finishes stringing his compound bow.

"We ready?"

"Beth off the phone?"

After a long, uncomfortable silence, punctuated occasionally by "Yes, Dad", "I'm sorry" or "I understand", Beth returned the cellphone to Kennedy, and they prepared to enter.

Beth asked first. "How do we get in?"

Kennedy reached to the door knob, and the lock shattered as she turned. "We walk."

Xander knew something was wrong twenty feet into the warehouse. Kennedy was five feet in front of him, her Slayer-enhanced night vision making her perfect for point. He had his arrow nocked and ready, and Beth was right behind him, stakes in both hands.

It was the rats.

It had been a while since he had seen a nest, it didn't come immediately.

The cannery line was where it came to him. It was then that Kennedy started walking faster. She lead through a door, around a corner and through another door when they came to a room with tables, chairs and vending machines.

Xander remembered Spike's description of vampires that didn't feed. Like famine pictures from those dusty countries, except not nearly as funny. He had a gaunt, drawn face and pale yellow eyes. His leg lay in a seemingly impossible position, covered in ragged camouflage. The fingers on his right hand were gnarled, and

He couldn't read the gold writing on the faded maroon shirt, but he knew what it said. "Razorback Fever! Catch It!"

This was a Sunnydale vamp.

"We have the vamp, but this one is practically down," Kennedy said. "What do we do?"

Xander took the arrow off nock and handed both to her. "Hunt up some rats."

She came back with four raw rat-kabobs, and with the knife of his Leatherman, he slit their throats and poured their blood into the vampire's mouth. Beth kept quiet, but longed to ask what the plan was. So this was a vampire. Why revive it? What's the plan?

Kennedy had to go into the factory twice more before the vampire showed signs of life. It blinked it's yellow eyes. A few more rats and it started to laugh.

"I...", it started. It had a hoarse, horrible laugh.

"What?"

"I know you."

* * *

Kennedy made way first out the door, followed by Xander. Beth stayed up with the vampire, keeping quiet and staying near the door, where she could hear.

"How does it know you?"

"I don't know."

"I'm hunting rats for that vampire, Xander! This is not the calling I signed up for!"

"I know. I know. But this is the first supernatural thing I've seen here besides you and Beth. I am so not ready to give up now. Not until I know what he knows."

"This vampire hasn't fed in a while, Xander! It doesn't have anything to do with this!"

Kennedy's been yelling. Xander kept his cool. The vampire couldn't lift his head, but had turned it. He was listening.

"I know. This one has nothing to do with last night. But maybe he knows something we can use."

"And if it doesn't?" Kennedy used the word 'it'.

"We used to have Spike as proof. Put on his game face and stand him in front of a mirror and you couldn't say there's no such thing as vampires."

"And keeping a pet vamp would be a good thing?"

"I'm thinking maybe. Worth thinking about."

"How are we gonna restrain it? The hardware stores close at night here, Xander. Hell, even the Wal-Mart closes at night here."

"Look at him. We could restrain him with a wet blanket."

"I think I'd prefer a hundred pounds of steel chain." Silence. "Alright." Then, as an afterthought, "Don't tell Buffy."

She heard a bitter laugh. She couldn't tell who it was from.

"Go get the Blazer."

"You get the Blazer!"

"I don't drive. You know that."

"Then send Beth! I don't want you alone with him."

"Beth is fourteen. She can't drive."

"I don't like this."

"I'm not asking you to like this."

"Fine." She could hear Kennedy stomp off, so she quickly moved herself away from the door. Xander came back to the room. He stopped and took a deep breath before he walked up to the vampire, pulling a chair and sitting just out of arm's reach.

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat, pulling out a cross on a necklace and a bottle of water. He kept a stake on his lap.

"Now, I don't like hanging out in places where I can see my own breath, OK? What can you tell me about the demon population around here?"

The response was a hoarse whisper. "Buy the Audubon guide and stake me already."

Xander opened the bottle, which had a small label with a cross on it. He poured a some into his hand, then splashed it on the vampire's face. It started sizzling and smoking. "That isn't being cooperative. You said you know me. How? How do you know me?"

"You lose track of all the vampires who've beat you down?"

Beth moved around quietly, toward the vampire's head, around Xander's left.

"Most of 'em got blown away. Like in that Kansas song."

"Your slayer was good."

"_Is_ good. And hey! I've killed plenty of your kind without her."

"That so?"

"I'm the one asking the questions. You're the soon-to-be dustpile with rat blood on his lips."

"What about the dark one? Wilkins' pet?"

Beth couldn't read the look that flashed on Xander's face. He replaced it quickly with a blank one. "Out in the world. Kicking vampire ass."

"Shame. With the two you're trailing, thought someone caught a taste.... Used to sneak into the coma ward. Normally that's the bad stuff. Rather have rats. Or doped-up army crap. But a Slayer?" The hoarse laugh returned.

Xander took a deep breath. Beth breathed quietly, trying not to draw attention to herself or her alarm.

"The black girl. She smelled good. Wished we could stop. Were hell-bent on Hell. Angelus went, I hear. How's your arm?"

Xander's hand is getting twitchy on his stake. "Fine. Used it to send many of your kind to Hell. Years more use in it. Bastard." He took a breath and took the stake into his right hand. "We flipped the script on you guys. We tapped into the source. There are hundreds of Slayers. Thousands. What do you think of that?"

"What do I think?" Again, the hoarse laugh. "Soup is good food."

Xander got up and kicked the vampire, but it rolled with it and ended up on it's knees, trying to pounce at Beth. She threw her stake hand his face, connecting hard with a right cross. He grabbed her arm and pulled, turning her around and pushing her down.

Xander tried to grab the vampire, but it turned, grabbed his arm and tried to bite his wrist. He went in deep enough to draw blood, then let go and dropped to his knees. By then, Beth had recovered her footing and swung her stake, which went right through the heart.

The vampire exploded into dust.

Xander held the bow in his injured left hand, applying pressure to the bite with his right, as he walked to the loading dock.

* * *

She wasn't speeding.

She turned the radio off and reached into the glove compartment. License and registration. She checked out her smile in the rear-view mirror, then trained it back at the flashing lights.

"I told you not to drive so fast, Michele. Big ol' leadfoot."

"Fuck you, Kim."

Kim turned around and nudged their friends. "Wake up, guys. Michele's gonna flirt her way out of a speeding ticket."

Crystal wiped the sleep from her eyes. "This should be fun."

"Yeah." Tiff piped in. "She-Hulk batting her eyes at a hi-po. Where's my video camera?"

"Shut up. I wasn't speeding."

They were going to visit Kim's parents for the weekend, and she was looking forward to it. She had stolen quick looks at the sky when she could, and she was amazed at how many stars there were. A field trip to the planetarium in high school had shown that many, but she never saw them from her yard at home.

She glanced at the mirror again, but couldn't see much, between the hi-beams and the flashing lights.

Sure she was breaking training. Kim's mom was well-known on the floor for her care packages, and judging from Kim's shape, even before the freshman fifteen, this weekend's meals would make her taste buds dance and make Coach blanch. Still, she'd be sure she got her morning runs in, at least. She wasn't totally giving up. She was just taking a break.

She had been watching the mirrors, but she didn't see him come up. She looked up into the flashlight shining at her face and tried to smile. "Is there a problem, officer?"


	3. Chapter 3

Snowblind Chapter 3 

* * *

It's her.

The one there, in the hip-huggers and the tank top. Dark hair hanging down her back. What a rack, too.

That's the one for tonight.

He sat back, watching as she danced. The DJ's been hitting a slow groove, surely watching her as intensely as he had been. The lights bounce off her necklace and her belly chain. He knew that, with just a few words he could have her exactly where he wanted her.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror above the bar, ran his hand through his hair, and stalked across the club.

* * *

"Then what happened?"

"He crawled into the back seat, poured rubbing alcohol on his arm, and did his best rock impression until we got back to the hotel."

"His Fred Durst?" Willow sat, her homework spread across the bed: the math, at her feet and on her lap; the Lit, at her side, on Kennedy's pillow; her programming project -- highlighted printouts, dog-eared and bookmarked texts on Java and TCP, Powerbook running the editor and compiler -- set on the corner, where Kennedy's feet would be, if she wasn't on the other end of a cellular connection. "He does a great ... no, not even good, but energetic, with the enthusiasm and the smiling, and it wasn't Fred Durst at all, was it?"

The laughter sounded canned through the small cellphone. "No, it wasn't that. He was just quiet and brooding." A sigh. "I miss hearing you talk."

"Most nights, you're trying to make me _stop_ talking." She clipped her pen to the collar of her gray tank top and dried her palm on her striped boxers.

"First I try to make you forget to use words. I like to hear you babble."

"So that's your game, huh?" The words played across her mind. "Game. Oh, yeah. Game! Do something for me."

"I'm kinda far away."

"No. Not that. Andrew said he gave you some stuff?"

"It's after midnight. I am not going to play Andrew games after midnight. No way."

"This will be fun. I have the core code compiling and functional. C'mon, this will be cool."

"I think your thermometer needs adjustment."

"Just do it."

"Alright." She heard shuffling. The magic number is ..." She read off some numbers.

"Global positioning isn't magic. Magic is much more precise, and the Army can't turn it off when they feel like invading somewhere. But I can't find drivers to make my computer accept it, and if I write 'em, I won't have time to read my lit, and we're just starting _To The Lighthouse_." She typed in the numbers and clicked submit.

"I'm afraid of Virginia Woolly."

"First, no, you're afraid of Elizabeth Taylor, and second, no, you're not, I am." The monitor flashed once, then again, then it was filled with information. "You _are_ on the east side of town, your local sunrise is at 6:54, and tomorrow you'll have clear skies, with snow expected before the end of the week."

"Made some progress, huh?"

"The interface to the USGS maps was the hard part. I've been having Andrew test it, looking up different cities. I'm looking into mobile data channels so I can tie it into the Bug. I found the cutest little case on the internet that'll fit right into the dashboard. There's already MP3 players coded, so I just work out some interfaces."

"Then you rip your three Sleater-Kinney CDs instead of keeping them in the CD changer?"

Willow put on her fake pout. "I don't thing you're taking me seriously."

"I think of you driving with a computer anywhere near you and experience open-mouth-of-hell levels of fear. That is serious." A yawn came through the speaker. "I'd talk more, but I've been on all day. I'm wiped."

"Would it help if I told you I was wearing that silk teddy?"

"It wouldn't even help if you told me you weren't. Call you tomorrow?

"Of course. Good night, Wonder Woman."

"Good night, Sabrina."

Willow closed her phone and put it down on the bed. She put her pencil in her math book and closed it. She's never get back to dif eq's after that.

* * *

The bite was closed. It wasn't even that deep. There was just a sting and a slight ache whenever Xander tried to move it, so he didn't. He kept the zapper on his chest and the beer on the bedside table next to the phone.

He was watching a particularly confusing movie on cable where Johnny Depp was doing the Giles thing, tracking down evil books. Maybe part of the confusion came from the beer.

The clippings folder and the maps were on top of the TV. The laptop was in its bag, next to the door. He didn't want to research. He didn't want to think about it.

He thought about switching to another channel. The other choices were health infomercials, Girls Gone Wild infomercials, a lack of music from MTV, and Fox News. Somehow, a worldwide search for satanic literature seemed the most comfortable choice.

There were three dead soldiers already, with one in terminal condition. He hadn't thought about the case in hours; they hadn't died in vain.

* * *

Kennedy was beginning to miss the heavy bag. Yes, she's swimming again, after nearly a year away from the pool, and yes, running in a chilly morning felt good. Even better when she could set her own pace and not have to deal with the chatter and gossip of the younger Slayers.

But sometimes there's just no substitute for hitting something.

She had wanted this trip, the first real action since Sunnydale. She had wanted to come back with solo kills. Not related to the group and not minimized by assists. Like Buffy and Faith had. Hell, like Beth had. And hey, an averted apocalypse wouldn't be bad, either.

Xander had given her the research this morning, dumping it on her at Shays and then going back upstairs. One eye was bloodshot and the other wasn't, which was such a weird thing to see.

She had caught Beth's dad on the phone and told him that they wouldn't be there to pick her up this evening. He didn't sound remotely happy to talk to her.

Now she was digging through Xander's notes, trying to figure out the next step. The messily-annotated map was spread out on her bed, and a notebook half-filled with Xander's scrawl. She was beginning to fit the problem into her mind, but there were still questions, like what did Xander mean when he wrote "Following - Not Leading" across the top margin of the first page?

It was so much easier when you can punch something.

* * *

It took a few minutes for Xander's eyes to adjust to the darkness. He patted his pockets to make sure he had everything. Stake. Cross. Holy water. Cell phone. Wallet.

He steeled himself as he surveyed his surroundings. The pale white faces of the denizens. The dank and underlit pit they gather in. The disgusting things they ate and drank.

The greasy happy hour tacos and cheap tap beer were hardly the worst things he had seen in his life, though, and the music on the bar's stereo was recognizable. "In The Club" by 50 Cent. One of Faith's favorites. There was hardly a decoration, from the light over the pool table to the posters on the walls, that didn't advertise an alcoholic beverage. Pretty typical for a campus bar.

There was a small group gathered around the pool table. He stopped by the bar to get a pitcher of Killians, then put his coat and a pitcher down at a table near the group. He didn't have a Cardinals baseball cap on backwards, or a dark hoodie, or a wallet on a chain. Not that this didn't sound increasingly like a good idea.

Good ideas abound elsewhere, but the plan is here.

He put a stack of quarters down on the edge of the table. "I got next."

* * *

This one was an easy pick. Only about an hour east. A stand of trees overlooking a lake. Lots of dead leaves, which made it a good test of her sneakiness.

Kennedy found tracks by the lake, which had already frozen over. Lots of small animal ones, plus some hoofed ones. Deer? Elk? Buffalo? Wildebeest? Hell if she knew. But that one? That one she knew. Hamat.

She tracked it into the woods. She considered going back, since this was not the cause of all this, but a Hamat on the loose was bad news.

She got as close as she dared. It was getting close to dusk, then all her light would be gone. Eighty yards or so. Closer than that and she'd get drawn in.

She unscrewed the tip to an arrow, replacing the head with a silver-plated one. Xander had packed two, just in case. Then she stood, holding her breath. She held her breath, drew the arrow and took aim. And then let it fly.

The Hamat is light green with a torso about the size of a football, ten spindly, hook-footed legs and an extendable tube for a mouth, which it extends through the back of the head, through which it sucks the brains of its victims -- in this case, a three-point buck. The deer's knees were shaky and almost buckled once, but its will is no longer its own. Friedrich's Folio says that a host can 'live' for up to three months under the control of the Hamat, after which it leaves eggs in the host's desiccated ribcage and tries to attract a new host. And they can only be killed by ...

Thwok.

... silver.

She didn't notch another arrow, despite her training. No point. These things were solitary creatures, so there wouldn't be another one around.

Besides, she only had the one silver arrowhead.

The old host was a dog, a grey-speckled brown mutt with a pus-covered eye and matted hair. It, like the deer, still had basic life signs, heartbeat and breathing. She didn't find the characteristic H-shaped wound on the dog, so she was sure it didn't lay eggs.

She took her hunting knife and slit both animals' throats.

Kennedy then back-tracked her way back to the lake, where she pounded out a small hole into the ice, which she used to clean the blood and ichor off her arrow and blade, then replaced the original head and pocketed the silver one.

This is a win. OK, not a big win. Hamats were, as demons went, small-brained and animalistic, and they weren't known for working for or with other demons. This, then, had nothing to do with the deaths she was investigating, but she had killed the demon, so she was satisfied.

Until she heard the chink of a pump-action shotgun behind her.

"You know what trespassing is, missy?"

She raised her hands above her head, her bow loose in her left hand.

* * *

The friends you buy with a pitcher of beer are not quality friends. Nobody will go to the wall for you for a pitcher of beer. They will talk, though, and they control the topics. This group? Pool, beer, weed, girls, rap, sports, and combinations of those five.

Which was enough to want to make 'em shut up.

After about three hours, during which he had consumed one glass of the five pitchers he had bought, his new-found best friends had told him what girls do what under the influence of what organic compound, what three teams had a lock on winning the Super Bowl, that Eminem was the bomb, and that his pool table english was shit.

"It's the altitude. Get me on a California table and I'll wipe the floor with you."

"Bullshit."

"I'm telling you, I can be good at this."

The shot he took showed nothing of his skill, bouncing balls off bumpers and sending the cue ball into a side pocket.

"Just not today."

He checked his watch. Just after six. His challenger, a pasty thin white guy with the beginnings of a full sleeve tattoo running down his right arm, placed the cue ball and shot, sending the two into a corner pocket. He had a Yankees cap on backwards and a cigarette in his mouth. The smoke made Xander's prosthetic eye itch and water.

The place was beginning to fill up, causing him to lose track of people, of positions. He bumped into a table while lining up a shot, knocking over one guy's drink. He felt himself start moving his head back and forth, trying to compensate for for his restricted field of vision. Didn't want to give that secret up until necessary.

After that, he stuck close to the wall when he wasn't shooting, breathing deeply and gripping the pool cue.

* * *

The guy was still too far away to hit. The voice was back some. No way she could rush him before he shot off.

"Yeah. I've heard of trespassing."

"You know, you're supposed to ask the land owner before you hunt on it?"

"That's on the licence or something, right? I should've known that. Sorry." She supported her left hand with he right, holding both, and the bow, above her head. "Didn't take a shot at anything. Still have all my arrows."

The voice doesn't answer. She hears some shuffling behind her, and the light of a flashlight bounces around behind her. It isn't trained on her back, so whoever this was, he had one hand holding the shotgun and the other one holding the light.

"We're gonna take a walk now. Go forward."

They made a few hundred feet before she worked the plan. A slight spin with her hand and the bow dropped behind her. She stopped walking.

"Go on."

"That's my bow. It cost me almost a thousand bucks."

"I'll take care of it."

"I don't want to leave it here."

She felt a push against her back, and she moved. She swung her left behind her, connecting with a face as she grabbed the barrel of the shotgun with her right. Kennedy was between the person and the dangerous end now, and the gun went with her as she spun around again, driving out all his air with a knee to his gut. The flashlight went flying as the man went down.

She tried one-arm pumping the weapon, like Sarah Connor in that Terminator movie, and the first shell flew out, so she pumped it again and again until it was empty, then dropped it on the man at her feet, grabbed her bow, and ran.

* * *

They came in as a group, but split apart. The one in a backwards baseball cap, listed as "Kenneth Tolerud, Beloved Son" in his obituary but affectionately called "K-Dog" among those who don't get the paper, swapped high fives with half the pool table crowd. Xander looked for reflections in their glasses, wanting to confirm what he pretty much knew.

The group around the pool table treated him like a great friend. Buttmonkeys. Either they're in thrall or in denial. Either way, a fight with this one would mean a fight with the others. A twelve-to-one fight could be fun, but that's not strategy. A scout can't report if he doesn't make it home.

The other two sat at a table near the bar, watching the evening crowd as they walked past. The male one has a John Stossel moustache and a black turtleneck. The female has curly shoulder-length black hair, brown eyes and calf-high stiletto-heeled boots. Xander poured the holy water into a red plastic cup and walked up to the pair. One? That he could probably handle. Two? Maybe.

The plan came to him as he walked up. He put on his smile.

"Hi. I was just noticing that you were the hottest girl in the whole place. Really. What gets me is who you're hanging with. I'm sure I'm much better company."

The turtleneck started to stand. Xander looked right at his face. That's right, remember the face, buddy.

"No. I'm amused. What do you have planned?"

"Doing something to you that Roger never would."

She smiled. Roger didn't. She grabbed her purse.

* * *

The shot drew Kennedy back.

She had spent an hour of darkness circling around, trying to make sure nothing was behind her, and from the sound of the shot, she must have done a pretty good job. The bow was even back in the bag when she heard it.

She took a far straighter path toward the shot. She didn't know firearms that well, but she thought the guy found his bullets. Or at least one of them. And he must've bumped into something he hated or feared.

She was almost 50 yards away when she saw him. He was on his knees, his hands at his side and his parka off his shoulders. She saw him shaking, but still not moving. She moved through the wood, around his left side, until she saw behind him.

Another Hamat. Hooked claws ripping into the parka, climbing up his back.

She crouched behind a tree, reaching into her pocket for the silver arrowhead and pulling an arrow out of her quiver. Her breath slowed and she focused on the threads of the arrowhead, turning it slowly onto the shaft. She glanced out to the moonlit clearing and saw it climbing, crawling into the hood of the parka. She slid back behind the tree, nocked the arrow, drew and held a breath, and stood to draw.

He had turned.

He was picking up the shotgun.

Her aim went from the man to the shotgun to the hooked claws peaking out from behind his head, and back to the man.

Her Watcher had drummed it into her head back when she turned 12. Bladed weapons are most dangerous when you're close. Projectile weapons benefit from distance. Therefore, run from knives. Rush guns.

Kennedy crossed into the clearing before the man picked up the shotgun, stepping on the barrel and knocking it away from his hands. Her left hand, holding the bow and, with her index finger, holding the arrow, was lifted up for balance as she knocked him down with a boot to the head. She leaped, turned, and fired in the air, catching the parka hood from the bottom and pushing the Hamat out. Its blood looked black in the moonlight. She whipped the arrow, sending the bleeding body flying, then found a clean spot on the parka hood to use to drag the guy out. She was already composing the note she'd leave on him, ready for him to wake up after that hit, "use silver bullets" being a key phrase.

This wasn't why she was here, she knew, but sometimes there's just no substitute for hitting something.

* * *

The deal with vampires is that they're predators. They're hunters.

Her left leg was hooked around Xander's right. Her hands ran through his hair as she kissed him. His cup sat just out of reach on the lid of the dumpster, next to her purse. He was forceful but careful as he moved his hips. He didn't want to play his hand too soon.

Predators choose the time and place where they attack. They choose their prey, looking for the sick, the weak, ones that separate themselves from the herd.

Her breasts felt cool in his hands. He thought they'd be colder, but room temperature in the bar was pretty warm and it takes some time to cool down. She took off his cheater glasses and dropped them. He heard the clacking sound as they bounced off concrete.

They want their prey to only recognize the danger when it's too late. Just watch Animal Planet.

He closed his eyes and concentrated as he got close. Not thinking of her. Thinking of someone else. Someone who was warm inside. Her grip on his hair tightened and she moaned and jerked against him. He opened his eyes when he heard her laughing. The ridges were up across her forehead and her fangs had come in.

They don't expect their prey to fight back.

A quick jerk forward knocked down his cup, pouring holy water down her back. She shrieked as smoke enveloped her shouders. She pushed forward, knocking Xander down and throwing him across the alley. She was at him again, pushing him down and going for his neck when he pulled his cross free of his jacket pocket. He could hear it burn her as he put it to her side. She grabbed at his neck head for a second before rolling away, coming to her feet.

Xander slipped his hand in his pocket as he tried to get to his feet. His left hand, still holding the cross, supported his weight. She was on him again, knocking him down again. She was on his neck when he worked his stake free of his coat pocket. He brought it down on her back and she was gone.

Xander stood up slowly, zipped himself up and dusted himself off. He picked up his stake and cross and replaced them in his pockets. He saw his glasses, smashed and lying below her purse on the far side of the alley.

Then he leaned against the wall until the stars left his vision, stood and started limping back to the motel.

* * *

Kennedy had her bow bag and spare arrows spread across her bed, and was drawing over and over again, listening to the cams. After a few draws, she layed the bow down on the bedspread and took a small bottle of oil out of the carrying case. A few drips, then she drew it again and again until she was sure there was no sound.

She was pulling out the bowstring wax when she heard a knock at the door. A quick peak through the peephole and she opened the door.

Dust stood out on Xander's black jeans and shirt, and a bandage peeked out of the collar. His glasses were gone. She knew why he wore them, with the tint and the shatterproofing. He wouldn't have just forgot them. "Looks like you found something to do today."

"Yeah. Took an idea and ran with it. You hungry? I hear they have this new thing here, where you call up and they bring you food." Forced humor.

"Yeah, that would be good." She sat crosslegged on the bed with the bow on her lap, proceeding to rub wax into the bowstring. "So, you going to tell me about your day, or will you just leave me hanging? Because, going out without backup? Not the safest move."

He started toward the chair in the corner. "Followed a hunch. It payed off, and it should pay off more tomorrow night." He sat down, sitting with his back forward and elbows on his knees. "We're going to have to start thinking of a plan."

"Why do you think this is going to work out better than last night at the factory?"

"Because I think I've made an enemy."

* * *

"We're here."

Beth sat up, turning off her flashlight and closing her English book. Her father buttoned up his Pendleton jacket and pulled his knit cap over his ears. Beth pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt and on her tan fleece-lined denim jacket.

"Should we do it?"

"Let's go."

Beth lead the way, with her father following. Their car was hidden from the highway by a row of green John Deere combines, and they made their way to an anonymous gray tin building behind it.

"Cold night."

"Yup. Winter's almost here."

Dad pulled a small black case from his pocket, unzipped it and pulled two slim metal bars and knelt down before the door knob.

"Are you sure you can do this?"

"I did it for your Aunt Jillian, remember?"

"She didn't have half the lock they have here."

"Honey, Milt Tollufson doesn't need you coming in here breaking down doors. He did right by the family when Grandma Ludwina died. We don't need to do wrong by him."

After a few minutes, lock clicked.

"We ready?" Dad got off his knees and put the lock picks back into his pocket.

"It'd be nice to have sunlight behind us right now."

"You betcha, kiddo. Can't have everything, I guess."

The door swung open and they entered. It was colder inside.

No bodies would be buried until spring around here. With winter, the ground was just too hard to dig into, so they were warehoused until spring.

This one was found outside a bar in Marshall, laying behind a dumpster. Official cause of death is hypothermia aggravated by alcohol. The huge bite on his neck, clearly visible through the plastic, clearly had nothing to do with it.

"So, how's school going?"

"The usual. Math is tough. We're up to Napoleon in history. Nothing too unusual."

"And how was last night? You stayed out pretty late."

"I told you. One kill. Did my homework in the car."

"And you slammed the door on the way in. Woke your mother. And you didn't touch your soup at dinner tonight. Is everything OK?"

She sighed. "I don't know. It's just ...."

The body sat up. Dark hair fell limply over his yellow eyes and bulging forehead. He threw the clear plastic across the room and stood naked on the cold cement floor.

Beth was across the room before her father even moved, swinging her right leg into a roundhouse kick and following it up with an elbow-hit and a right jab. The newly-risen vamp dropped back, then lunged. _Death, coming at her with great speed._ Beth met him with her stake, and the vampire's remains scattered and fell to the ground.

"Do we have to talk about this? Can't we just go home?"

"Sure, honey."


	4. Chapter 4

Snowblind Chapter 4

* * *

The batteries were dead.

The sky was grey, the snow was grey, the trees were grey, and his magazines and the replacement batteries were in the trunk. That meant he couldn't play Golden Sun on his Gameboy. This sucked.

Mom was playing her crappy 80s stuff CDs, too, which sucked even more.

So, he was looking out the window, still in his coat because Mom's heater is crap, because Mom's car is crap, because Mom's life is crap and she'll never let anyone forget it. And he knew the whole route. Every road and intersection to Dad and Karen's place.

They passed the farm with the rusted silo. They painted the barn two years ago, but the silo just looks bad. Before that was the guy who drove an old Eagle Talon. Had two junked-out Talons next to a trailer, probably used 'em for parts.

And then there was that little lake. It still had a goose or two, even this late in the year, when it's already half frozen.

And up ahead, there's that creepy old house with the peeling paint. The yard was always full of weeds and the shed in back is falling down.

Somebody boarded up the upstairs windows. What would that mean?

His mom started singing along with the music. "It must of took a whole hour just to make up your face, baby! Oh yes you do."

He considered popping the door open and leaping out to his doom, then decided that road rash had to hurt worse than Mom's singing.

* * *

Beth got out of bed later than usual that morning. She hadn't woken up for her morning run and she dragged herself down wearing holstein-patterned pajama pants and an inside-out U of M t-shirt instead of her normal running outfit of lycra pants and baggy hoodie sweatshirt. She slumped bonelessly into her chair.

"Oh, honey, didn't you sleep well?" Her mother slid a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her. "Your father and you were up so late."

Beth took a sip of her orange juice, then picked up her fork.

"She was in fine form last night, Laura. I tell you, she's just amazing to watch."

Her focus was entirely on the over-easy egg in front of her. She trimmed off the white, flecked with brown from the pepper Mom sprinkled over it.

"I replaced the chain for your heavy bag." Her father took a bite of bacon, then continued. "The guy at the garage says that this one's thick enough to haul a combine, so it should take a while for you to work through it."

Bethany mumbled out a thank you and cut off another piece of egg. The tip of her fork cut into the yolk. The yellow bled out, filling the shallow circle of the plate.

_She sinks to her knees and feels the teeth tear into her neck...._

"Thanks, Mom, but I'm not hungry. I think I'll go train some." And Bethany stood up and went back up the stairs, forgetting to push her chair back under the table.

* * *

The styrofoam cup felt warm against Kennedy's hand as she walked through the alley. A slight breeze blew through the alley, but she could make out certain highlights. Over there, next to the trash can, was shattered optical glass. Some of the pieces were big enough to have recognizable curve, and those also had a little of that rose tint. Xander's in his glacier glasses now, totally covering the eyes. There was a small dusty spot across the alley over there, so the fight ended there. A little blood there, too. The service door for the club was 30 feet down, and they were between a the back entrances of a drug store and a coffee shop.

"So, what's the plan?"

Xander's breakfast sandwich was still steaming, half-eaten. A small piece of egg hung from the stubble on his chin. A pair of Band-Aids stood dark against his neck, scarcely over the collar of his black Carhartt jacket.

"I get the vampires here and we kill 'em all."

She was tempted to slap that smirk off his face. "I'm seeing two parts to that plan. The 'get them here' part...."

"And the 'kill them all' part. Right. So, do you have any thoughts for the Slaying?"

Kennedy looks up, scanning the rooftops for cover. "Someone up there. Somewhere. With a bow. Shoot some, pop down with the stake when she's done. And someone right next to you."

"No." Xander took sip from his coffee. "You do not come in. You stay out here, too. If these things can recognize a Slayer, then the game is up and we're talking Jesse and Severin in the honky tonk. Besides, we don't want to get caught relying on your fake ID."

"What happens if you can't get the vampires out here to the carefully-set trap?"

"All sorts of fun red death, so I guess I'd better make sure they come, right?"

"So, how are you going to make that happen?"

"My wit and charm." Xander too another bite from his sandwich. "I'll cover my end. You just make sure you cover yours."

* * *

Beth worked on her combinations. Jab-cross. Jab-cross-kick. Jab-cross-knee. Jab-knee-elbow-headbutt. Steam rose from her body whenever she stopped swinging. Sweat pasted stray hairs to her forehead.

_...and she starts her kill swing, then her left side erupts in pain. _

Jab-hook-roundhouse. Jab-hook-hook-thigh kick-head kick.

_She sinks to her knees and feels the teeth tear into her neck._

She took a moment to catch her breath and stop the rocking of the heavy bag.

"I just have to be faster." And she started again. Jab-hook-uppercut. Jab-cross-roundhouse....

* * *

The sky was gray and overcast when they pulled off the state highway onto the county road, and Xander again sat in the passenger seat, real eye facing out again. The plastic wall, up again and in full force. Not a word out of him since the alley.

Kennedy kept trying to jump-start conversation, pointing out the houses and farms along the way. This barn looked recently painted, and paint do they pain them red, anyway? Were all the houses either white or brick? Nothing drew him out.

So she stopped trying. So she didn't comment on the two old wrecks in that yard or the half-frozen lake or the boarded-up windows in the house with peeling paint and the plywood over the windows. Another 20 minutes from Beth's farm. 20 minutes of silence.

* * *

Xander didn't like jokes, preferring obscure references and witty comments. Jokes are shticky. They're easy, and they don't flow. But there's this one that Uncle Rory told him once.

Sam Houston was looking over a map in the Alamo when the sentry calls out -- "Santa Anna's army is coming over the horizon!" Sam says to his steward, "Bring me my red coat," and goes out to the mission wall.

Later, the sentry calls out "Santa Anna's army is surrounding us!". Again, Sam calls to his steward, saying "Bring me my red coat."

Davy Crockett sees this and asks Houston -- Uncle Rory does the worst John Wayne ever at this point -- "Wadaya need the red coat for, pilgrim?"

Sam says "Simple. I wear the red coat, and if I'm hit by a bullet, the blood will be the same color as the jacket and my injury will not bring fear to the hearts of the men."

Later, the sentry calls out. "Santa Anya's cavalry is preparing for a charge!" Sam Houston calls to his steward, "Bring me my dark pants!"

Xander sipped his coffee, from the thermos that Laura, Beth's mother, gave him when Kennedy was getting Beth. She asked about the other night, what had happened at the soup factory. Seems Beth's been quiet and withdrawn since then. He had tried to reassure her, tell her that everything would be fine. Wear his metaphorical red coat and be persuasive. By the look on her face as she left, he was unsuccessful. His skills at clouding the minds of Slayer moms was getting rusty.

Kennedy startled him when she got in. He could tell by her giggles. She was in her seat and in his face in an instant, and when he turned his head to see her, the cheap plastic lid spilled everywhere.

Good thing he was wearing his dark pants.

* * *

"So, what's the plan?"

Kennedy was in the driver's seat again, but now she had a small female morose person in the front seat. Xander took the back seat after the coffee incident, which served to break nobody out of their mood.

"We create a crossfire. Kennedy from the front of the alley, and Beth, you from the roof. That way, we don't have any pesky backdrop issues. Besides me. Don't shoot arrows through me. I don't think I can emphasize that particular point enough."

"Gotcha. No arrows through Xander." Kennedy looked up into her rear-view mirror. "And how did you say you would get them to go out into the alley?"

Xander leaned back and took a sip from his coffee cup. "Persuasion."

"I'm thinking you've left off a few details. What happens if you don't get the vamps out into the alley?"

"Well, I might just get them to fight inside the bar, which, you two being underage, would mean I have a fight on my hands. Very _Near Dark_, without a vet around to provide the requisite happy ending."

"Well, I think I'll have to insist on a happy ending here."

"We all want happy endings, Kennedy."

"My morale's lifted. I'm filled with confidence here, Xander." She looks over a moment. "How about you, Beth? You filled with confidence in Xander's plan?"

Beth looked up and tucked her hair behind her ear. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Me up on the roof. The drug store across the street, right? I can do that."

Xander leaned forward, so his head was between the two seats. "I suppose that gets us to the next difficulty."

"Which is?"

"I've only seen three vamps, and I took care of one, so there's at least two. I don't have any way of coming up with an 'at most'."

"So, once we shot our arrows, we should be prepared to jump into the fray, stakes first?"

"Yeah." Xander leaned back, frowning.

"There's more to that 'yeah', isn't there?"

"The star of our Slayer's dreams. I don't think his friends know he's dead."

"Great." Kennedy took a look in the rear view mirror, trying to read Xander's face. "That just makes things real simple."

"How do...." Beth's words fade to silence.

Xander tried to find the balance between an understanding kind response and the volume and edge needed to be heard from the back seat. "How do what?"

She looked down at her black sneakers and the flowers embroidered on her flare-legged jeans. "How do we tell which is which? We don't want to kill people, right? We don't do that, do we?"

Xander took a long time to respond, but Kennedy found herself not jumping in to fill the gap. Not so much with weapons, she found herself thinking.

"Umm. No. We don't. And I don't think we'll need to. I didn't get a 'thrall' vibe off 'em."

"Thrall?" Beth turned to look behind her, into the back seat at Xander. "What's that?"

"You ever see _Dracula_? Remember the creepy bug-eating guy? It's like that. I've only ever seen it once. It isn't a common thing at all. Chances are, they're just friends. Once they see the other friends getting instant karma, they'll freak."

"And how are we supposed to tell the living people?"

Xander chuckled, which didn't serve to reassure Kennedy one bit. "Because the real Slim Shady's on tour somewhere else, I think."

* * *

She walked carefully, trying not to make too much noise as she paced across the black tar roof. It was night and cold, so Beth knew she didn't have to worry about getting tar stuck to her Pumas, but she still tried to keep away from the edges.

The bow was leaning in the back corner, waiting. From there, she had the best view of the back door of the bar, and there was the dumpster she used to climb up. She could also see in some windows in apartments above the main street shops, including one with a large, round man without clothing. She decided to stay away from that corner for now.

She could see down the alley. Two blocks east and everything switched from businesses to houses. Off to the east, she could see Weiner. She knew that's where she'd end up.

That's where Grandma Ludwina ended up.

She stayed in the old house like, forever. Grandpa went before Beth was born, so she never knew him, but she knew that there were always lots of toys at her house from when Mom was a girl, plus her uncle's old comics in a box under the bed upstairs. She had found an old one there with a redhead popping out of the water on the cover. Connie's brother had a poster of her on his door, so she asked about it. X-Men 101. The introduction of Phoenix. It was like $20 bucks in his big comic price book, so she took it and sold it to him and bought a CD or two. She couldn't even remember what she bought.

Soon after that, they found the cancer.

It was pretty advanced. Dad figured out there was a problem when he found her sleeping on the couch. Turns out it hurt too much for her to climb the stairs to get to her own bed. Who knows how long it took, how long she had been in pain?

It was too late, then, to operate. There was some chemotherapy they tried, and they cut out some of her gut to try to stop it, but she lived the rest of her life on the far side of Weiner Hospital. She never complained. How could she not have complained?

She sees the college girls barhopping, talking loud. She wants to scream. She wants to cry, get them to look at her. She knew she couldn't. She dreamed about danger, and she went to find it, and her dad was proud. She dreamed about saving people, and she saved them, and her mother smiled and hugged her. Now she dreamed about dying. Death, coming at her in an alley.

What could she say? How could she complain?

She went back to her corner, hoping the round man had closed his curtains.

* * *

People on stakeout in movies always had their windows open, so they could hear. Forget that. She didn't have to hear anything, she just had to see it. Besides, it's too damn cold out.

Kennedy had pulled her favorite NOFX disc out of her case. Skate punk at its greatest. She quietly sang along to the first song, "Soul Doubt", as it hit the chorus, tapping her fingers and her finger-tab on the steering wheel along with the beat. She hadn't listened to it in months. Since Sunnydale, maybe. It was with her stuff back in New York. It used to be her big workout disc. Her Watcher would always blush when "Liza and Louise" came on.

Why didn't she pull it out earlier? It's just so great?

She watched the people coming in and out of the bar they had cased, looking for those who were clearly dead. Hopefully, she could get an idea beforehand who the targets were. Her bow was tucked under a cheap car blanket with the on-bow quiver full, and she had one arrow leaning against the dash, so she'd be ready to go quickly.

Her mind was wandering, trying to to decide whether everyone was dead or just scandinavian. People weren't as oppressively blonde as she'd expect, for sure, but they were pretty pale.

_When I look 'round, I only see outta one eye_

As the smoke surrounds my head, the sauna

I hear the voices, but I can't make out their words

Saying things, saying things that

I got something sticking in my eye

Damn. She moved her hand to the eject button, shattering the shaft of her spare arrow on the way. The razor-sharp arrowhead made a small slice across the dash board as it fell.

The image came to her mind. In that basement in the vineyard, back in California. Xander, lifting her to her feet, bow in hand. Caleb, the bastard in a clerical collar, thumb out, with her just steps away, powerless.

She cracked the CD in half in her hand.

* * *

There's a mirror near the door.

It has beer labels from the time they started making the beer to the time they made the mirror. The same brand that provided half of the cheap crap used to make this bar look pretty. The same brand whose advertisement is showing on the silenced television in the corner across from the door. The same brand Xander's nursing.

There's a blank spot on that mirror, a point where there's no label at all. Just a blank spot. If he looks at it from his seat, he can see the corner table, holding a group of college girls gossiping about guys in their major and drinking mixed drinks. Sex on the Beach. They've grown increasingly louder over the last half-hour, and he knew the reason.

Schnapps. This juice. That juice. The other juice. Ice. And, of course, the vodka. All that is to cover the taste and to hide the fact you're drinking hammer-juice, leading to the Zeta mating call. "I'm _so_ drunk!"

Still, a far better choice than Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear draft.

He kept them on his left. His blind spot. That was fine. Those were the ones he was sure weren't a threat. Pretty much on the 'threatened' list, instead.

He knew vampires drank. He knew they hung around in bars. Did they get anything from blood alcohol? Besides the obvious? Funny that he never thought of that before. .08 is the legal limit, which is pretty small.

"Hi! I noticed you looking at me in the mirror there."

It was one of the girls, wearing a pink tank top and black jeans. He hadn't noticed her, but he was focusing closer, at the traffic running in and out. She had wavy black hair pulled back by a scrunchy, and a small pendant hung from a silver chain on her neck.

He worked to get his voice above the music. "I wasn't really..."

"Oh, that's alright. There's lots of guys that look. I don't usually start talking to them."

"I'm honored." He saluted her with his bottle. "What caught your ... I mean, what made you interested?"

"I'm not sure. There's just something about you, I guess."

Xander laughs. "That's what they all say."

"You aren't from around here, are you? We don't really get too many new folks in town. Well, there's lots, and I do mean _lots_ local farm kids that come through, and a bunch of grad students from like Egypt and stuff." She took a sip from her drink. "You're from California, right?"

"What gives you that idea?"

"Your voice. The way you speak. Nobody talks like that around here."

"And nobody talks like you where I'm from."

"Why did you come here?"

"My health. I came to Minnesota for the waters."

"It _is_ the Land of ten-thousand lakes. Actually, they did a count once. Closer to thirty-thousand."

"Shouldn't they change the license plates, then?"

"You'd think." She has a nice smile and beautiful dark eyes.

"To be honest, it wasn't the mirror. I just saw you sitting there, looking all lonely. You shouldn't aught to look so lonely. Who were you thinking about?"

"A fr... someone I used to know. Back home."

"That's so sweet! What's her name?"

"Her? Him."

"So, are you, like--"

"No! No no no. It's not like that. We just worked together, sorta. His name was Spike."

"You mean, like the dog in _Rugrats_?"

Xander smiled. "Pretty much."

"So, we know his name. That's a start."

"My friends call me Xander."

"And what do your enemies call you?"

Droopy. Lackbrain. Monkey Boy. He sipped his beer. "If you let your enemies live long enough to know your name, you're not doing it right."

"Really. I suppose I should keep mine a secret, then?"

"Are we going to be enemies?" He tried to avoid looking at her neck. No vampire in his right mind could resist that neck.

"Selene."

"Like that girl in _Underworld_?"

She almost blushes. "Hey, y'know what? It's a little loud to talk in here. My apartment's just a few blocks from here. Wanna get lost?"

"I was supposed to meet someone...."

"Tell 'em you were tied up. C'mon."

She grabbed her biker jacket and led him toward the door.

* * *

People make choices.

The girl parking her Camaro chose to leave her coat in the car, and to wear spike heels you can't run in.

The couple coming out of the pickup with the empty gun rack have identical shirts and Stetsons, to go with their Wranglers and ropers.

Those choices have consequences.

The guy in the alley chose to drink too much, and now he's behind a dumpster, lying down in his own vomit.

That girl chose to let all her friends help her celebrate her birthday. She might end up like the guy in the alley.

The girl in the biker jacket chose to let the big guy in black follow her. He shows up in the reflections off the car windows, so that's something.

The guy staggered to his car and started it up.

A girl in a tank top and black flares ran up 1st Street, heading toward the park. A guy climbed out of his car and followed her. He looked around him, looking for other eyes that noticed her.

_She has the vampire down, fear in his yellow eyes...._

Beth chose to climb down from the roof and follow.


	5. Chapter 5

Snowblind

Chapter 5

* * *

She hated being used like that.

She was half a block away before she remembered she left her purse and coat at the bar. She couldn't go back to get them. Not after the scene. She could feel the goose pimples forming on her arms. And the shivers took control of her arms every few seconds.

She found herself unable to see through her tears. She stopped, leaned against a store window, and let the crying take over her.

That bastard. How could he do that to her?

She tried to stop, to think of other things, like her cat or Dad's farm, but everything ties back.

He's with that bitch.

He called the cat 'Tigger'. He bought her catnip and scratched behind her ears.

She covered her face and hoped nobody saw her.

"Are you alright?"

Her first two attempts foundered in fluids. She could barely see through her hair. Just his legs. Big black shiny boots with silver tips. Black jeans. "Nguh."

"Here."

A white blur appeared before her face. A handkerchief. She blew her nose. "Thank you." She still couldn't control her breathing yet. It still hitched.

"Is there something I can do? You crying like this, that's just wrong."

"It's B-B-Bria...." She can't control the waterworks.

His boots scuff across pavement and he's leaning next to her, holding her shoulders. "Y'know, I could go in, give him a big atomic wedgie. That'd show him for doing what he did."

That turned something around. Laughs mixed with her sobs.

A gentle touch to her chin moved her face up. "Unthinkingly causing such tears on such a pretty face? That is truly a crime."

She took a deep breath, trying to take control over her breath again. "C-c-cold." A hitch stopped her breath. "Left m-m-my coat."

"Here," he said, pulling his black jacket off his shoulders.

"No. I can't. You'll freeze."

"No, I'm good." He smiled and winked his pale blue eyes. "I don't mind the cold."

* * *

"So, Selene. What kind of name is that?"

Xander thumb ran his finger distractedly over her belly chain as they walked down the sidewalk. Her forearm hung over his left shoulder, her thumbnail scratching against his neck.

"I dunno. Greek or something." Selene bumped with her hip. "I'm down here."

Xander leaned against her tug. "Down a dark alley?"

She turned in his embrace and took his hand in hers. "Best entry is in the back."

"Um." Xander followed her lead. "You meant to say that, right?"

Selene backed herself against a wall and pulled him into a kiss. She ran her fingers through his hair. His hands reached to her waist, then wandered higher. Her leg snaked its way around his, her thigh rubbing against him. She pulled back, holding his lower lip between her teeth until it snapped back. Her lips pulled back into a hungry smile. "That'll ruin the surprise."

* * *

It looks so normal. A guy and a girl just walking and talking. Anyone would think it was a love story.

Unless you knew. Unless you recognized his face.

Beth was half a block away, kneeling on the roof of the photography studio. Her bow sat beside her. She had the shot. Even without practice, even on Xander's bow, she had the shot.

She wouldn't take it.

The dream was too real. The script was set. Beth was waiting for her cue to come in.

The girl leaned her head against his shoulder. His arm reached up around her and squeezed gently. Beth looked down, avoiding the scene. She noticed a black stain on her knee. Roofing tar, more than likely, from one roof or the other.

_ She sinks to her knees and feels the teeth tear into her neck.... _

She'd never get that out.

* * *

"We seem to have stopped progressing."

Selene's leather jacket had slipped off her shoulders. Her hands were wandering

across Xander's chest. She leaned back against the brick wall and smiled.

Xander's hands were hidden by her jacket. A smirk and a slight trace of her

lipstick were spread across his face. "This feels like progress to me."

"But we're not moving."

"I'm kinda worried about you inviting me in. Well, not so much worried. More

like curious. Or amused." Xander kissed her again, first on the cheek, then on

the neck. "Selene, Selene, Selene."

"That's my name." She shook her hair back and smiled. "I've heard the phrase,

but I've never seen a deliberate attempt to wear out a name."

"I was just thinking. It's the perfect name for all the wanna-be vamp girls with

no self-esteem. Let's meet up with Lestat and we'll sit in the basement blasting

Bauhaus. Thank you, Kate Beckensale."

Selene looked confused for a second, then all emotion drained from her face. She

began to back away, but Xander held her fast.

"You know what I don't get? I understand going after loved ones. Really, I do. The look on someone's face when trust shatters? That's powerful stuff. What I'm _not_ getting is why you left the youngest daughter for last. Why you didn't feed from her."

"What? You think I'm involved in...."

"I know it." Xander smiled. "And you know it too."

The sound of her change mixed with the creak of her leather jacket as she struggled to free her arms. She looked at him with hungry yellow eyes and ran her tongue over her sharp fangs. "So that _was_ a stake in your pocket."

* * *

Kennedy took a long time to learn the bow. When she first shot an arrow, it only made it halfway to the target. This made her angry and she stomped off, refusing to even touch a bow for a week afterward. She'd play with foil and epee, poking at the cutout of a large and brightly-colored dinosaur. She'd use the crossbow. She'd run laps and swim. She'd read the _Demons do the Most Amazing Things_ books. She just refused to try the bow again.

Then her Watcher gave her half-sister a bow.

She tested herself on her thirteenth birthday. She could hold her bow, a 20-pound pull recurve out in position for 20 minutes, and could get eight arrows in the red at 40 yards. Her sister couldn't hit half that, and soon stopped shooting, moving on to tennis and boys, two subjects she had no interest in.

She didn't really get into bowhunting. Her Watcher thought it was closest to slaying as they could get. With a bow, at least. A guide took her out into Wyoming. He wasn't "in the game", as her Watcher put it, and despite pleas, he took her hunting for mule deer instead of predators. He insisted she take a compound bow, not a crossbow. He told her that the difference between an archer and a bowhunter is that an archer wants to know how far away from a target he can be and still hit it, while a bowhunter wants to know how close he can get to the prey.

Kennedy sat a block back, on a roof, watching. She knew that if she got too close, she'd be an actor in the drama, and it is far too early for that. It was time for her to sit and watch, and get ready to be an archer.

Now she just needed to figure out what she was looking at.

* * *

"Not that I'm not loving the intimacy here, but you do know it'll have to end."

Xander looked impatiently left and right, up and down the alley. He made a point of _not_ looking forward, avoiding her dark brown eyes and the caresses he could feel through the heavy sleeves of his jacket.

"Your hands are full. You let go of me, I'll be all over you before you have a chance to whip anything out."

"Cue the standard sex-and-death trip. Spare me."

"What else is there? Taxes? Boy bands? Reality TV?"

"Duty?"

"We have a Boy Scout here!" There was an edge to her laugh, a cruel edge. "I would've banked on 'Love'."

Xander shook his head, then dropped it.

"My, my, my." Selene laughed and flashed a pityless smile. "I think we've found the weak spot in your armor."

The laughter stopped when Xander slammed her against the bricks. "I'm going to enjoy killing you."

"Funny," Selene said, still smiling. "I was just thinking the same thing."

* * *

She really shouldn't be kissing him.

She shouldn't be kissing anybody behind the drug store.

She shouldn't be wearing his jacket. Not when she hadn't officially broken up yet.

She shouldn't let his hand on her leg like that.

She didn't know anything about him, beyond having a warm leather jacket and messy long brown hair. She shouldn't be getting involved with someone she didn't know.

She shouldn't kiss him this enthusiastically. She shouldn't be kissing him at all, but certainly not this enthusiastically.

She shouldn't let her knees shake when his lips trailed down her neck.

She shouldn't.

Really.

* * *

It's never fun to be blindsided.

Xander was in mid-sentence when he felt the grip on his shoulder, and he dropped his grip on Selene as he felt himself flying. Well, less flying than rolling. Not a strong throw at all.

He winced as he pulled a cross from his coat. He had lost focus, got caught up in the talking. Stupid. He backed up, trying to get hls bearings. His attacker came at him, long red hair under his baseball cap and white wife-beater t-shirt under his parka.

The cross came out. Xander held it at arm's length, relying on it as he tugged desperately at the stake in his back pocket. He couldn't spare a look to see how it's jammed. He turned his head, counting people. One, two, three, many. Selene's laugh echoed through the alley.

"You shouldn't have gone to all this trouble. Really. A card would've been enough."

The redhead pulled the cross from Xander's hand and hit him with a right cross.

* * *

"Excuse me. Can you help me?"

It was the best thing Beth could think of. It fit right in. It's his move, of course. The girl's blissed out right now. Just wait a few minutes.

"What do you need?" It was the guy. Thinking about getting greedy.

"I'm really sorry about this, but I was supposed to meet some friends here, but they never showed, and now I'm stranded. I live halfway to Windom and I'm really desperate. If I could just borrow a cell phone for a second, I'll get out of your hair. I'm just so sorry."

A glance and she can tell she's in. The bottom-feeding catfish can't resist a bright shiny little Daredevil.

* * *

"This is all you had? A cross and a stake?"

"You're forgetting fear, suprise and ruthless efficiency. The almost fanatical devotion thing doesn't work as --" Then a slap silenced him.

"I don't accept this." Stossel-vamp paced across the alley, trying to work his black pea-coat like a horror-aisle big bad. "He killed the Queen. He cannot be working alone."

"Just for my own curiosity, when you say Queen, is that a heredity thing? Like she's the oldest, or was the first turned by the last leader? Or is this some creepy brood thing? Becau--aah!"

Xander didn't know his arm could bend that way. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. No, he was sure he didn't want to know.

"He's a fool." Selene talked about him like he wasn't there. "I led him here. I talked to him. If he has friends, they haven't shown up yet, and I'd think they'd want to."

Her face turned. The ridges spread from the bridge of her nose at perfect angles, disappearing into her hair. Xander struggled against warm hands but couldn't budge.

Six of them. Selene and Stossel, Slim Shady and posse behind them. Plus the two guys holding him. Eight. Not the good odds. The _Hello, Larry_ odds.

"You're alone, aren't you? You thought you could get us one at a time, that we wouldn't catch on." Now who has a hook through their mou-?"

Her words were replaced by a scream, then a gurgle. The razor edges of the broadhead stuck four inches beyond her face. She fell to her knees.

Xander jerked his right arm out of that shocked thug's hand, following it with an elbow to his face. He turned and pulled up a fist in time to see a shaft fly into the brick, pinning the man's forearm.

Two exploded in quick succession as he turned around. He quickly grabbed his gear, looking for a threat. Stossel went at him, fangy and yellow-eyed until a cross pushed him back. Boots scraped to his right and he knew it was a Slayer. He lunged but stopped short at the sight of a barrel.

"You just back it up, yo."

He held it sideways, like in the hood movies. It took the pistol moving back and forth for him to notice Kennedy next to him. The gun backed up slowly, Stossel and and another guy behind it, then it turned a corner and was gone.

Kennedy took pressure off the draw and put the arrow back on the quiver. "So, that's the plan? I take it back. Buffy's not the worst leader ever."

"We're missing someone. Two bows and nobody walks away."

"She decided to go look around, a couple blocks north. I thought I'd keep up with you."

"You should've followed her."

"I do that and you're a blood donor."

Xander just pocketed his weapons and started walking.

"Gee, Xander. You're welcome. I'm always glad to help." Kennedy sighed and followed after.

* * *

She started shreaking when the girl hit him, and her voice stripped itself when he growled and hit back. He _growled_! People don't growl!

She found herself on asphalt, backing away on hands and feet while the fight went on. The girl had something in her hand. A knife?

His face is unrecognizable, changed. He seemed seven feet tall, dark and scary. He kicked and the girl flew across the alley, into the darkness behind a dumpster, then jumped out swinging.

A voice cries out to her left. Then the girl got up in front of her, kicking and angry and he was down.

She got on her feet and ran.

* * *

Xander started running when he saw Kennedy draw her bow. Damn it, he thought, show somebody _The Two Towers_ on DVD and they think they're Legolas. A head-butt staggered the vampire on Beth's back, and she had turned. A powerful hit to the gut dropped the vampire to his knees, and she had his collar in her left hand and her stake in her right, about to swing down. He was still looking left, crossing the road and checking for traffic, when it hit.

When he looked forward again, she was on her knees. A dark stain was spreading on the side of her brown fleece coat, and he could hear the vampire's laugh over his deep breathing and his footfalls. This one was a young, stupid one, he knew, because -- pulling him off Beth and plunging a stake into his heart -- the smart ones don't get so distracted by a bleeding Slayer they forget about everyone else.

He heard the next running steps behind him and he didn't even bother to look. They had barbed heads, so they'd rip her all up more if he pulled it out more, or even jostled it. Beth's eyes were wide with fear and wet with tears, and she took short, noisy breaths and trembled.

"We can't move you with this arrow. I'm going to break it. It'll hurt. Ready?" He saw Beth nod quickly.

He grabbed the shaft as gently as he could with both hands

"Xander? Did I...? What did...? Is she....?"

"Get the van. Now!" He heard Kennedy run off. "And leave the bow! We wouldn't want you shooting anyone else."


	6. Chapter 6

Snowblind

Chapter 6

* * *

Michele was on the floor of the main room, hugging her legs to herself and trying to stop shivering, when they came back. Not all of them left, of course. Two were upstairs with Crys, and one was there with her, playing with an eight-inch hunting knife.

Before, she would have been scared. Now she wanted him to use the damn thing already.

She tried to crawl further into a corner when they returned. They hurt her most when they were happy or angry, and they were angry now.

The one who yelled the most was the one who had captured them. She could tell by the baseball cap he wore backwards and by the way he waved the gun around, like he had that night. Waved it around and laughed.

Now he wasn't laughing. He was yelling at a man with a moustache. She couldn't tell his words except when he'd make a point by yelling "Bo-bo-bo!" and pointing the gun. No spent shells came out, so she knew it was empty.

She couldn't concentrate enough to make sense of the words, but she saw a hit from moustache man throw the other one and the gun across the room.

There was silence, then more talking. Michele almost couldn't feel the footsteps walking past her. She could hear the first blast and the funny angle the moustache man's leg was at when he went down. She heard ringing when she saw the his arm fly up. She heard screaming when she the brass fly in little arcs above her, and when she saw moustache man's head explode.

She didn't see the body when she was carried across the room, into the kitchen and thrown down the stairs. She did still hear screaming and crying.

She didn't know how long it took her to realize it was her that was screaming.

* * *

"Hi! This is Willow Rosenberg's cell phone, for use when she's not home. She's home right now, so leave your name and number and she'll get back to you as soon as she's out again."

"Hello? Weiner? This is Xander. Listen, I don't want anyone to be worried. Everyone's fine, or will be. The new girl is at ... is it pronounced 'whiner' or 'weiner'? Anyway, the big hospital around here. Hospitals. I gave 'em the corporate card. There was a deal with an arrow. I'm - I'm sorry. Anyway, tell everybody, and keep an eye out for a bill.

"'I hate voice mail."

* * *

It was a mistake. Another mistake!

Kennedy sprayed the blue stuff on the seat, then wiped it off with a paper towel. The light above the gas station pumps clearly showed the streaks of blood run down the vinyl to the tan carpet.

It came from the right instincts. It's a joke but it's real; the sergeant is tough on the trainee because he knows how hard it can be and wants the troops to be ready. Her watcher was out of kind words when the bastards ...

Buffy had cut Chloe down. Buffy had put her in bags like a stack of pizza boxes and dug a hole in the garden. Knowing 'Mom', they hired someone to cut out the old marble and put in some without bloodstains.

Beth was down. Who would've known she had a second wind?

Another squirt from the spray bottle as Kennedy tried to clean up after her mistake.

* * *

Old magazines.

Hospital waiting rooms always have old magazines.

Xander liked looking through the old magazines. It gave him a way to work through frayed and antsy nerves, so he quietly looked through stacks, pulling out People and Entertainment Weekly, leaving Newsweek and Ladies Home Journal.

Then he saw it.

The satellite cover.

Time magazine. Six months old now. Big black-and-white satellite photo, showing the Pacific Coast Highway going past a big hole in the ground. Big white letters spelling "Gone". Rona had bought it in when they were still at the motel, still in California.

That was when everything had hit him, back then.

Even now. He needed air.

A nurse stood at the Emergency door, a parka on over her scrubs. He took a breath of air, which chilled his lungs.

They stood in silence and looked at the street lights. The light reflected off the clouds, giving the sky an amber glow.

She broke the silence first. "You want one?"

"No thanks. Don't smoke."

Another silence.

"Filled with arguments why I shouldn't, I bet."

"Nope. You nurse, me patient. Not right now, I mean." He breathed deep and let it out slowly. "Besides, everyone has things that'll kill 'em."

She took another drag of her cigarette. "You brought that girl in, right?"

"Right. How's she doing?"

"Don't know. She's in post-op. I'll call up after break." Another drag. "The sheriff will want to talk to you. You know that."

"I do."

"What are you going to say?"

"What is there to say?"

"A girl comes in with neck wounds and a wooden arrow in her chest. That leads to questions."

"You want to know some answers?"

"Would be nice."

"What is there to say?" His instinct to cover up fell away. "She fell on a barbecue fork? Bats? The ever-popular 'neck rupture'?"

"How about 'wolf attack'?" She's in on the secret. Hard to say how much she knows, but she knows something.

"Wolves attack people around here?"

"Not a documented wolf attack in North America in over a century, but we've had five suspected wolf attacks in the last six months. Two on my shift. No wolf sightings, either."

"My principal used to blame drug gangs on PCP. That is, until he got eaten."

She held up her cigarette and looked at him. "You get him?"

"The one who did this? Yeah. I got him." He sighed. "There's more."

"You gonna get them?"

"That's the plan."

"I'll check on the girl. And don't worry about the sheriff."

"Thanks."

"It's a full moon out, above those clouds." She took a last draw and dropped the cigarette. "That's when the freaks come out." She walked back in through the electronic doors.

Xander took another breath. "Don't I know it."

* * *

It was hard for her to tell when she came to. The lights were off and the room was dark, so the fuzzy edge of consciousness had even less definition. It took her somewhere between five minutes and nine hours to recognize the regular beeps as the heart monitor, then another two minutes to five hours to connect the full feeling in her arm to the plastic hoses hanging next to her.

"Good morning, Beth." It took some time before she could place the voice. Not recognize, place. Eventually, she decided it came from her right.

It was Xander, with his grim face and his glasses.

"You're still dopey. That's fine. Enjoy the ride while you can. People go to jail for trying to feel like you do now."

She coughed, trying to get words. "Stupid people," she rasped.

"I should probably give you kudos for that, but I won't." He coughed and moved his seat closer. "Hospital gowns have no pockets to put 'em anyway."

A slight giggle became a wet cough. "Pretend I'm laughing."

"OK."

"Ken... Ken... Her?"

"She doesn't need protection. You do."

"Why isn't she here?"

"Cleaning up the car."

Beth started to feel the sensation, not pain really, under her left arm and at her throat. "It got me. Arrow."

"The gobs-of-slayers thing is still pretty new. There are still things to work out." He moved his chair forward. "We're sorry."

Beth considered a number of responses, but was too loopy to get to the end of any one of them, so she stayed silent.

"Look, Beth, I gotta know. What happened? Why did you go off? Did you see something or hear something?"

"I had a dream." Beth worked to sit up. "There was this vampire. We fought, and I..."

"...and you just followed the script?"

Beth stayed silent. She couldn't think of anything to say.

"Let me tell you a story. Years ago, there was this Slayer. All the prophecies said she was gonna die and this big evil guy would break out and destroy everything, and she was scared. Which makes sense, because it was scary. But she didn't face it alone."

"Did she ..." Beth's voice is weak. "Is she OK?"

"You tell me. You saw her this summer." Xander reached out and held Beth's hand. "Buffy never took a setup at face value. She always figured something to turn it around, make it her own. "

Xander leaned forward, hands on the bed rail. "That's the lesson. Just because something is written in a book or flashes into your head doesn't mean it has to be that way.

He stood up and stretched. "And I'm being the intense freaky guy. I'm sorry about that. It should be silly stories and root beer floats or something."

"Don't like root beer."

Xander laughs, leading Beth to tentatively giggle. "That's good to know." He pulled a stake out of his pocket. "I don't know if any vamp knows we'ae here, but take this, just in case. We'll watch out until your parents come, then they'll probably chew us out at high volume."

"Wish I wasn't here. Wish I could go out again."

"You'd miss out on your chance at the Edie Sedgwick weight loss plan." His attempt at a smile fell. "And word to the wise? Ixnay on the Iyay ishway. That way lies badness. You rest."

And she faded out before he shut the door.

* * *

Kennedy looked up from her seat in the waiting room when Xander walked in. She had spent the last half hour ignoring an infomercial about some cooking thing or other. "How is she?"

"Resting. She wants to go back out." He reached up to wipe the exhaustion from his eyes, first his right, then, carefully, his left. "Doctor says she'll be down for a week."

"It'll be sooner." Kennedy shifts in her seat. "I have her bag. Her homework, her sketchbook and everything."

"She's asleep. You want me to carry it up?"

"We gonna talk about this, or we gonna talk around it?"

Xander rubbed his left temple with the heel of his hand. He looked around the waiting room, at the TV, the stacks of old magazines and gray benches and chairs. "Rick and Laura are coming in about a half hour. They'll be absolutely thrilled to find their daughter in a hospital room at 3 in the morning. I'll take that duty."

"So that's the second choice, then."

Xander stopped a second. He turned toward the wall, standing in front of a colorful abstract framed print. "You thought you could make the shot. She moved. You can't tear yourself up over-"

The bag passed his head to the right, flying open as it hit the plexiglass. "You _know_ that's not what I'm talking about!"

Xander turns around, right shoulder first. "Here we go. The 'I don't need a babysitter' rant. When you stop throwing other people's things for a few minutes, we can revisit the issue of adult supervision."

"Supervision? _I_ need supervision? You Custer off without backup and you turn this back on me?"

"That's the way the game is played. You make it-"

"It's not a game!" Kennedy's hands waved. "It's not some first-person shooter! I can't go back to Willow and say 'Xander lost all his health but if we camp a spawn point, he'll show up'. When you die, you die, Xander, and when you go off half-cocked-"

"I didn't go off half-cocked. I drew 'em in so we could hit 'em. George C. Scott read Rommel's book so I wouldn't have to. That's what happened tonight. We hooked their nose and kicked their ass. _That_ was the plan."

"It's good you explained it to everyone. It sure kept us together!"

"I didn't, OK." Xander turned and took a step away, toward the exit. Just one step. "I could've, but I didn't."

Kennedy stood there for a moment, then started collecting the papers and books from the floor. Xander stood back for a while, then joined her.

"This is her sketchbook?"

"Yeah. She's good."

He opened it up, flipping through the pages. "Teenage girls and horses. What's up with - whoah!"

Kennedy looked up. "She really got him, didn't she. Looks just like that-"

"No. No. Not the guy. The house!" Xander flipped the pages back and turned the book toward Kennedy. "This house." I know that house. It's off the highway, on the way to Beth's place."

Kennedy looked closely at the picture, then at Xander's face. "You sure about this? I mean 100 percent?"

"Positive."

She put her stack into the remains of the backpack. "Let's roll."

Xander put his pile down. "No."

"No? That's what we're here for!"

"No. Reason number one: Beth. We wait until her parents show up, and we take all the yelling I just know they have for us. That's part of the job. Reason number two: sunlight. There is none. They have the advantage. If we can get the happy glow-y ball of fire on our side, let's do it. Reason number three: I'm exhausted. Sugar, caffeine and nervous energy got me through high school, but I now suggest a nap and a good meal before saving the day. And reason ..."

"I can't believe this!" Kennedy grabbed her coat and went off toward the door. "You can stand around if you want..."

"Stop it!" Xander grabbed her arm.

"You stop it!" She turned around with anger. "I'm a Slayer! This is my duty, so let me do it!"

"That's right! That's the fourth reason. We do it and we do it right. No going off half-cocked. We've seen what happens when that happens. Blundering into bombs and vineyards full of ..." Xander put her face into his. "We need plans. We need strategy. And tactics. We need to use our strengths, but not rely on them." The grit and determination dominated his voice, his face.

"When we go off, we need to go off big and hard and fully cocked."

The last line hung in the air.

Xander winced. "Oh God, I didn't just say that."

Kennedy was stifling a giggle. "You said that. At length."

She broke out into hysterical laugher. After a second, he joined in. "I'm telling," she was barely able to croak the words out.

Xander soon joined in. Soon they were doubled up and unable to stand, so they ended up on the waiting room couch.

Kennedy recovered first. "You do that on purpose, don't you?"

Xander smirked. "Don't tell a soul."

"So, do you have an actual plan, or you just like talking' about 'em?"

"Well, a wise man once said 'Most human problems can be solved by an appropriate charge of high explosives.'" He rubbed his hands together, getting ready to plan. "Do you know if there's an Army base around here somewhere? Or National Guard armory?"

* * *

Michele was able to stand again. Her vision tunnelled, her head spun and her fingers tingled, but she was able to stand.

She tore through the orange juice and cookies, set on a wooden chair by the stairs, with a roll of stickers that read "Be Kind To Me. I Gave Blood." She consumed everything. She knew she should've saved some for Crys, for Kim and for Tiff, but she just couldn't stop herself. She drank the juice straight from the carton, a dribble running down her neck, stinging at her bites. The cookies, animal crackers, crunched in her mouth. She had so little saliva that she had to wash them down with the juice.

She couldn't believe what she believed. This was like the movies. She thought a moment about how to fight them. The empty carton and box fell to the cold as she lifted the chair high and brought it down hard. And again. And again. If it broke, she could protect them.

The chair did not break. She wasn't strong enough to break it.

Her legs gave out and she fell to her knees. As she heard steps travel down the stairs, she could not control her tears.


End file.
